 | Haunted hearts |  |
PREFACE.
“If you could only write a book one day and
publish it the next!” as a friend of mine lately exclaimed.
Then, indeed, one could keep up with the
times.
But, alas! my book, to-day offered to the public,
was projected — let me see — five, six, yes, seven
years ago, at the very least. The foundation of it —
long since slipped away, the outline of it — lost in the
filling in, — were suggested by some of the traditions
of a New Jersey district, related to me, from time
to time, by a venerable New Jersey farmer, my host,
and the companion or instigator of my excursions,
during a few weeks' sojourn at the farm. He was
minute in his delineation of the historical localities
and revolutionary associations of the neighborhood,
and they were not a few. I trust I profited by the
valuable information he imparted, and added something
to my stock of positive, though unproductive,
knowledge. But that the romantic incidents, the
spirit, and listened to by me with eagerness, took
fast hold of my imagination, and, though long in
ripening, eventually bore fruit, the following pages
furnish voluminous proof.
This little New Jersey graft, this germ destined to
swell to such unforseen proportions, long lay dormant.
Even when it started into life and vigor it promised
only a miniature growth; but, as sometimes proves
the case with buds of foreign stock, it took wonderfully
to the soil, claimed room for its expansion, and
grew and grew, until at last it assumed the form, and
acquired the dimensions, which it wears to-day.
Meanwhile, busier fingers than mine, they tell me,
and pens earlier in the field, have made the crime on
which the incidents of my story hang (an unnatural
and unusual crime in civilized communities), the
basis and groundwork of more than one popular feast
which fiction has served up to the public. Still, as I
did not write my story for the sake of the crime, but
have tolerated the crime for the sake of my story, — as
details of material horrors have been subordinate in
my mind, and will be, I trust, in my reader's, to the
widespread and lasting influence which they exercised
on innocent hearts and lives, — I venture to hope that
this web of fancy, `long drawn out,' may contain
will-o'-the-wisp that formerly beguiled the traveller,
the ghosts that used to stalk through churchyards at
midnight, the spectres that once haunted forsaken
homes, have all been extinguished, laid to rest, or
banished by knowledge, reason, and experience; but
so long as individual hopes, and loves, and fears are
merged in the universal lot, so long as each human
heart is but a link in “that electric chain wherewith
we are darkly bound,” what hope is there that the
will-o'-the-wisp of deceit, the ghost of buried joys,
the spectre of withering fears, will cease to beguile,
startle, and haunt the great heart of Humanity?
And because we all have within us such false lights,
such hidden ghosts, such stalking spectres, I venture
to believe that in probing life deep at one point, I
may chance to reach to the common root, that haply
I may awaken a respect and sympathy for truths
buried in life's unfathomed wells, and may thus strike
the secret spring of all charity, by suggesting the
debt of love, compassion, forgiveness, sympathy
which each owes to all, and all to each; since who
is there who does not, may not, must not, carry in
his breast that pitiful thing — A HAUNTED HEART?
| Haunted hearts | |